Stamps Profiles

Anthony Davis

Profile:

Anthony Davis was honored as a Stamps Distinguished Visitor during the 2008-2009 season at the University of Miami Frost School of Music as an internationally known composer of operatic, symphonic, choral, and chamber works, as well as a pianist and as the leader of the ensemble Episteme. His best known opera, X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X, played to sold-out houses at its 1986 New York City Opera premiere and was the first of a new American genre: opera on a contemporary political subject. His other operas include the critically acclaimed Under the Double Moon,Tania, and Amistad. In 1993, the X recording received a Grammy Nomination for “Best Contemporary Classical Composition” and Davis made his Broadway debut, composing the music for Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels in America: Millennium Approaches. Davis’s orchestral works include Maps (Violin Concerto) and Notes from the Underground, as well as Violin Sonata, commissioned by Carnegie Hall for its Centennial; Jacob’s Ladder, Esu Variations, Happy Valley Blues, and Pale Grass and Blue, Then Red. A New Jersey native, Davis was Yale University’s first Lustman Fellow, teaching composition and Afro- American studies. He held positions at Cornell University before joining the University of California at San Diego in 1998 as a full-time professor.